Category Archives: Poetry Readings

Post navigation

ADVENTURES AND EXPERIMENTS WITH WORDS AND IMAGES
for full programme, please see the meetup page

Bath Writers & Artists chose their own topics for the forthcoming meetup on Saturday 1st June. If you take a look at the poster below , you will see why someone outside the group asked whether this was actually the publicity for a year long Bath Writers & Artists’ creative writing course?

We wanted to celebrate the diversity of the group, and the courage of the way members seem to branch out so fearlessly into (for them) untried and untested things. By focussing on the idea of GENRE, we have all been able to propose almost anything which has appealed to us …… which is how the day turned into the utterly extraordinary event which is postered and previewed here.

The morning space is too small for visitors, but we will have room in the Lonsdale in the afternoon, for friends who would like to enjoy the presentations, share our tea table, and contribute to the fascinating and illuminating discussions which are certain to take place.

Like this:

These words by Una Chaudhuri concluded PETER REASON‘s adaptation of the ClimateLens Playbook which shaped our morning session in the Lonsdale Room. We opened the morning with a passionate essay by Exeter poet CHRISSY BANKS on The Place of Poetry in a Time of Catastrophe which asked

What, I wonder, is the place of poetry in maintaining some kind of hope, reason and balance in the face of a world that seems to be spinning out of control? How can we meaningfully face climate change, war and social inequality with our words?

and offered us this inspirational answer

When a poet loves the world but hates what is happening to it, writing is a way of containing the chaos experienced –the anger, frustration, disappointment and powerlessness. Poets can wake people up as long as they can stay awake themselves.

‘Poets can wake people up as long as they can stay awake themselves’ might almost have been the theme of the whole day. The writings we shared were so intense with energy and commitment that the meetup simply became more and more compelling as the hours went by. AMA BOLTON has already done a brilliant post, Of Trees and Tygers and Catastrophe, on her WordPress site Barleybooks ( link here). I won’t be trying to add to any of her detailed account, with its rich library of useful links, except to quote the post’s final words

…..but it’s time to face the apocalypse head-on and do something about it. The expression it’s not the end of the world has gained a horrible new relevance.

Moving on …..

The Climate Lens Playbook, which Peter Reason had adapted so skilfully to the short space of workshop time we had available, proved to be a wonderfully illuminating way to think about the poems which had been submitted by VERONA BASS, AMA BOLTON, EILEEN CAMERON and LOUISE GREEN. We will be using it again when we have our follow-up session on Saturday 20th July. ( link here ) We will also be using the poem Rise (link here) which Peter introduced in the afternoon, both as an inspiration and as a model for our own work. The link on the Barleybooks site is excellent. Please use it if you are thinking contributing to this Day. ( I will be messaging out in more detail how to shape your contributions very soon.)

The two authors and performers of the poem ‘Rise’

Our audience…..

What an amazing gathering! What an electrifying afternoon! What a responsive group of friends and strangers flocked to the Elwin Room! I counted 43, and know that a few more trickled in for SUE SIMS‘ launch. The atmosphere was unlike any meetup I can remember and it felt from the first moment a huge privilege to be part of this remarkable event.

Afterwards, also how good to hear that someone had written in about the pleasure she took in our inclusivity – three senior poets helping FLORY WISDOM with her remarkable debut reading, the lively Bard of Bath performing alongside an eminent academic who has now completed his formal career.

Another inspiring response from another visitor new to our events :

I feel deeply that something huge is happening – as if we are all being re-arranged. That everything is going through a huge transition where things have to be undone in order that they can be recreated on an altogether different plane. And here it’s the role of the artist to enlighten our inmost thoughts – some of which, as yet, are inaccessible for very many people.

I will be writing to these new friends and asking whether they would like to send us a contribution to this post.

And here is a lovely summing up from our very own VERONA BASS which I was so delighted to receive in my emails four days afterwards

in BRLSI on a clear bright day

we bear witness to catastrophe;

is this blue sky thinking?

PLEASE USE THE COMMENTS BOX BELOW IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS DAY.

And please make sure that you are following this blog if you would like to come to more of our events.

Like this:

So much has happened for the wonderful Bath Writers & Artists since our January post. And so many good things are going to happen soon. I’ll write up the archive first. But please scroll down to the end of the post to see some of the events we already have in prospect – and mail in your requests to be included in the first ‘shout’ when it goes out. For any of you following this blog, who would like to join the group, we still have room this year for a few more members. Use the contact form if you want to get in touch.

New member PETER REASON joined us for the afternoon to introduce the work he plans to do with us on The Place of the Arts in a Time of Catastrophe. This produced a wonderfully lively discussion across the Elwin Room and set the mood and theme for the dedicated meetup which is going to take place at the end of March.

We also had time to hear open mic readings from three of our 2018 subscribers who will be moving on – SUE CHADD, LINDA SAUNDERS and SHIRLEY WRIGHT – and from four of our new 2019 subscribers – EILEEN CAMERON, PENNY GARDINER, PETER REASON and FLORY WISDOM, whose own ‘showcase’ reading has been scheduled for the end of March.

Flory Wisdom Showcase 23rd March 2019

There was a bitter-sweetness about saying goodbye to such good and longstanding friends, all of whom have contributed so much to our meetups over so many years and all of whom have such excellent reasons for being unable to sign up for another full year’s programme of events in Bath.

Saturday 23 February 2019

This was the day for our third ‘Homeric Afternoon’ which this time had parted company completely for a while from its original brief to read right through The Odyssey. It had also very sadly lost its foothold in the beautiful Bradford-on-Avon garden where it started out, and had instead to snuggle itself rather tightly into the Southfield living room. ( A move much appreciated by the resident Maine Coon cat. )

Reading right through The Four Quartets was our ambition for the afternoon. We achieved this, along with lively discussion and digression quartet by quartet, but at the expense of leaving quite enough time for the delicious food which had been laid out so lovingly in the kitchen waiting for us to break. A few of the group had to dash away hungry – something we think we may remedy at our next meeting by scheduling a ‘Homeric Late Breakfast’ instead of a ‘Homeric Afternoon.’

Many thanks for their contributions culinary, thespian and intellectual to VERONA BASS,

The ice was all around… Gustave Doré, 1876

CLAIRE COLEMAN, ANN PRESTON, CONOR WHELAN and SHIRLEY WRIGHT. ( Also for their indulgence of the Maine Coon cat. ) It has been suggested that we might read The Ancient Mariner at our next meeting, to continue the redemptive journey theme. If we choose this, I have suggested we might introduce a new dimension by exploring Gustave Doré’s breath-taking illustrations, many of which are now available to view online.

Incidentally……The ‘Homeric Afternoons’ are open to everyone who subscribes to the Bath Writers & Artists group – depending only on how many an offered private venue can accommodate. Please get in touch if the prospect interests you

Forthcoming Events

The 2019 programme is already richer and more varied than ever as you can see by browsing the calendar details on the header menu on the blog. The meetup on 23rd March will be one of the most exciting we have shared, with contributions during the day from fifteen talented subscribers, some already well-established members of the group, others new. A huge thank you to everyone involved in creating this wonderful programme: ALI BACON, VERONA BASS, AMA BOLTON, EILEEN CAMERON, CLAIRE COLEMAN, ANN CULLIS, PENNY GARDINER, LOUISE GREEN, MARGARET HEATH, MIRANDA PENDER, ANN PRESTON, PETER REASON, SUE SIMS, CONOR WHELAN and FLORY WISDOM. Please look at the programme Page to learn more.

and finally…..
advance notices …..

FOUR EVENTS IN PROSPECT FOR 2019/early 2020

PETER REASON will be giving a workshop on Nature Writing later in the year.

CONOR WHELAN will be giving a workshop early in 2020 under the working title ‘Begin afresh, afresh, afresh’, borrowed from Philip Larkin’s poem The Trees. This workshop on the theme of renewal will be Conor’s final appearance as the Bard of Bath.

MARILYN FRANCIS & SUE BOYLE are co-organising a meetup Day on the theme of Childhood on Saturday 21st September and will be messaging out for submissions very soon.

SUE BOYLE will be offering a whole day workshop on Memory, Imagination & Dream sometime later in the year.

PLEASE REGISTER YOUR INTEREST IN ALL OR ANY OF THESE FUTURE EVENTS NOW if you would like to get on board. They are open to all members of the Bath Writers & Artists group.

Like this:

There were fifty people in the Elwin Room when we counted at 3pm – FIFTY people on the day Bath Christmas Markets opened, on the day of the Artisan Fair outside the window in Queen Square, on a day when most sensible people – unless they wanted to go Christmas shopping – might well have avoided Bath. We had a marvellously engaged and responsive audience, made specially lively by the colourful contingent who came to hear Larkhall star, artist JUDE WISDOM answer questions about her work. This followed a powerpoint presentation of selected pieces to accompany ANN PRESTON’S eloquent Appreciation, which we might be permitted later to include in the blog.

One of Jude Wisdom’s artworks included in the show

The Realms of Gold concert was also mesmerising with some of our finest readers and most admired poets delivering a powerful programme of prose and poetry. We all love drama, except perhaps an organiser waiting at 1.55pm for the arrival of the always reliable CONOR WHELAN who had promised to open at 2.00pm with a recital of Kubla Khan from memory. The piece really mattered to establishing the meetup theme. Only the wonderful talent and good temper of STEPHANIE BOXALL saved us from listening vainly to the silence of the void. Hers was a marvellously sensitive and compelling reading and it gave our afternoon a flying (albeit for this organiser a nailbiting) start.

The shared tea was unusually spectacular. Many thanks to VERONA BASS for taking charge of managing the tables, to all the generous providers, and especially to FLORY WISDOM who had been baking for us for days. FLORY will be presenting her poems for the first time on March 23rd next year, our youngest contributor so far and also definitely one of our culinary stars. It was quite difficult to coax the audience away from the food and each other’s company and back to their seats for The Letters from Mexico .

One of the slides for The Letters from Mexico with grateful thanks to Frederick Lord Leighton and Henri ‘Le Douanier’ Rousseau

This must surely have been one of the most delightful launches, for an author, that anyone could have had. Other than the little pieces of linking narrative, all I had to do was listen, enchanted, as friend after friend delivered my sonnets better than the author could have done, while PETE SMITH serenely showed the slides. The Letters from Mexico has now, under GRAEME RYAN’S excellent direction in Taunton, been a costumed play; had a formal launch at the excellent Teignmouth Festival of Poetry; an outing to the Beaufort Bookshop with audience spilling out on to the pavement and the glorious accompaniment of an overhead thunderstorm; and now presented itself in Queen Square, to a wonderful audience who had travelled, among other places, from Dublin, Exeter, Reading and Appledore.

The next scheduled appearance of The Letters from Mexico will be at The Swan Hotel in Bradford-on-Avon on Thursday 26th September 2019.

The next fully programmed meeting of Bath Writers & Artists group will be in the BRLSI on Saturday 23rd March 2019. The day is already rich in themes and interest. Please visit the programme Page to see the details if you would like to play a part in this.

Share this:

Like this:

Thirty three people shared the Odyssey-inspired meetup in the Bath on Saturday 28th July.

Here are the messages THIRTEEN of them sent in afterwards….. we would all love to hear more of other people’s thoughts … I am also posting up a few of the slides from the afternoon to underscore some of the comments made.

I am adding new pieces to the top as they come in, for those of you who revisit this post when you are told that there is new material to read.

I’ve just read with great interest all the comments so far from last Saturday. What I can say is that having heard the background to Odysseus Elytis’s “Ena to Helidoni” which Verona and I read I did wonder if I would be able to hold myself together to be able to read it, I was so moved by what you told us. The whole afternoon was extraordinary and I echo all the well thought out comments I have read with such interest on the blog.Claire Coleman, Radstock

Saturday afternoon was a haunting, a voyage, many voyages, across both Greek and Scottish waters and others of the imagination only. Inland voyages too: on the African continent and back in time in Verona Bass’s evocation of her childhood and into the surreal landscape conjured by Ann Preston’s artist-cousin where a brilliant white egg-shell is also a floating moon, its broken edges mirroring jagged mountain ridges, a strangeness she explored in her signature poem. Accompanied by exquisite paintings – Malcolm Ashman’s English landscapes in lemon and blue washes – and extraordinary photographic images, we were transported from our mundane selves, a sea-change, to contemplate the meaning of journey, which is also the meaning of home. Ama Bolton’s Warp, both beautiful and caustic, reminded us that there is more than one way of journeying and even the stayers-at-home, the peace-weavers, are changed, journeying through time, as we all are. A strange wind rose in the afternoon, stray doors crashed shut and sea-gulls keened outside the building, as if orchestrated: who can forget the haunting Greek music which accompanied the words of Odysseus Elytis’ poem? – a cry of grief and defiance in the face of oppression and a reminder of the griefs and demands of our own troubled era …

I consider poetry a source of innocence full of revolutionary forces. It is my mission to direct these forces against a world my conscience cannot accept, precisely so as to bring that world through continual metamorphoses more in harmony with my dreams.
Odysseus Elytis

posted by Caroline Heaton

The programme of readings based on a Homeric theme made for an enthralling afternoon. The extracts were extremely varied, ranging from old favourites to contemporary classics and from translations of Homer to a short reading in the original ancient Greek. The readings were skilfully arranged into thought-provoking sets and accompanied by rare and striking images including a series of landscape paintings by Royal West of England academician, MALCOLM ASHMAN. One of the highlights, and there were many, was a reading by AMA BOLTON of her sequence of poems entitled Warp inspired by a performance of Odysseus Unwound. Ama’s poems are refreshingly irreverent and written from a distinctly distaff perspective. Penelope wonders whether her wandering husband will be able to shut the hell up about Troy or settle down to an honest life in peacetime. But the most hauntingly original part of Warp is Penelope’s chant packed tightly with the technical vocabulary of spinning and weaving as she unpicks her day’s work ready to start all over again. Ama’s plaintive, ethereal song was as irresistible as the Sirens’.Ann Preston, Bath

The morning workshop was a discussion of a varied set of poems (brought by Sue), each drawing upon images of birds of prey – poems by Ted Hughes, Thom Gunn, Robert Penn Warren, Yeats, George Mackay Brown. A rich and thought-provoking session.The afternoon was miraculous – tying together ideas of journey, sea and The Odyssey, into something startlingly profound. The room was stilled by the second half in particular, which situated Homer’s myth in the context of modern Greek history and the fight against Fascism. Unforgettable images and words and some excellent performances. A privilege to be in the audience. Thanks and congratulations to everyone involved.Michael Loveday, Bath

A triumph! How well everybody reads now and what a breadth of poetry, with those lovely slides to give variety. Emily Wilson’s translation of the Odyssey, a treat if ever there was one, inspired an afternoon of poetry and art celebrating journeys, the contributions including writers from our group reading their own poems. AMA BOLTON, whose idea the event was, brought the house down with her reading of her 2006 sequence Warp, written with insight and humour about characters in the Odyssey . SUE BOYLE’s reading of her poem on those who perished in a submarine nearly had me in tears. All the readers did well and it was a delight to listen to the variety of approaches to the subject, with emphasis on the journey not the arrival. The slides added visual enjoyment and the display of MALCOLM ASHMAN’s pictures introduced variety. There were laughs in plenty but Sue led us to consider, more seriously, the influence of Homer on politics in Greece in the C20th. His work covers the great themes and understandably continues to thrill and influence. The life journeys of the 33 who attended were surely enhanced by the afternoon. I am so grateful to be included in the wider circle of the Bath Writers & Artists group.Margaret Heath, Bath

Yes, it was a wonderful event that wove a spell on us all: beautiful poetry, new and old, delivered in languages both new and old, with everything held together by the theme of journeying and The Odyssey never far from our thoughts. I found many of the readings surprisingly moving and, as usual with Bath Writers and Artists, I learnt a great deal. It was a pleasure to be part of the afternoon. Many thanks to you for masterminding the occasion and linking the various parts into such a harmonious whole. I look forward to our next gathering.Shirley Wright, Bristol

I hadn’t expected the afternoon to be so rich and illuminating. Such wonderful poetry, different voices, but most of all bringing in that political slant at the end was sheer genius. I learnt so much and am hungry to learn more now about Greece etc. Thanks for making such a great and inclusive atmosphere and for inviting me.Rosie Jackson, Frome

What struck me about the afternoon was how the acoustic power of poetry created such vivid and recurrent images. The ones that stuck with me were: going down into the dark of caves and coming back to the light; the death and rebirth of the vegetal world each year; sea and shore; home and journey. The images acted on different levels: as relating to or translating our everyday experiences (aren’t we all seduced by the words of one sorceress or another? Or gotten distracted from our task somehow?); as political (such as Sackville-West relating the suitors to the Nazi Occupation of Greece); as personal (do we all long for a lost home? Do we all long for an inner Spring?). The evocation of these images invoked some big presences that seemed to haunt the room, especially with the pictures of past poets on the slides. All this will lead on well to The Hero’s Journey in future, for as Robert MacFarlane puts it, to journey out is to journey in.Conor Whelan, Bath

Yesterday was the end of the heatwave. The City of Bath was assaulted by tempests of Homeric ferocity. The trees in Queen Square seemed about to be torn from their roots. And we fortunate people (eleven for a challenging and rewarding morning session with Sue Boyle, 33 and a delightful dog for the afternoon performances) were safe and dry indoors in the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institute. The afternoon started with a selection of readings germane to the Homeric theme. These included James Elroy Flecker’s The old Ships – an old favourite of mine – read by father-and-son Roger and Conor Whelan, and a selection from a much more recent favourite, Andrew Greig’s pamphlet Found at Sea, read by SUE CHADD. VERONA BASS and ANN PRESTON introduced their new pamphlets, Verona’s being the second of a proposed trilogy on her childhood in rural South Africa and Ann’s being a collection of poems inspired by paintings. Both were beautifully read.A sequence of slides showing paintings by MALCOLM ASHMAN RWA led into ROSIE JACKSON’s introduction to some readings from our 2013 anthology The Listening Walk, for which Malcolm donated an image for the cover. Readers from the anthology included LINDA SAUNDERS and CLAIRE COLEMAN. After the break for tea and talk, I read my 2006 mini-pamphlet Warp. Among the other readers were SHIRLEY WRIGHT (Carol-Ann Duffy’s poem Circe), MARGARET HEATH (George Mackay Brown’s That Night at Troy). and ROSIE JACKSON (Cavafy’s Ithaka). ANDREW LAWRENCE and I read from Homer’s Odyssey Book 5, he from the little-known Ted Hughes version and I from the original Greek. We then switched to much more recent but equally turbulent Greek history, with a reading from the fascinating 1943 radio-play The Rescue by Edward Sackville-West, a copy of which (with lithographs by Henry Moore) SUE BOYLE chanced upon in a charity shop, and a reading of the much-loved Ena to Helidoni, by Odysseus Elytis. These last readings were accompanied by historical slides, including a chilling view of a Nazi flag on the Acropolis at Athens during WW2. We ended with a group reading by volunteers from the audience of Theo Durgan’s poem Ithaca for Leonard Cohen – unrehearsed but perfect!
Ama Bolton, Wells

An Afternoon of Odyssey that left one longing for an extension of the journey. Unwilling to admit that the afternoon had come to an end, we listened to music composed by Mikis Theodorakis, the cadences being soothing and yet unsettling because we had learned just beforehand that the impetus for the song was the iconic poem by Odysseus Elytis used as a touchstone work in liberation politics. I felt it a privilege to be given the opportunity to read Ena to Helidoni in tandem with CLAIRE COLEMAN. All the poems delivered in the course of the afternoon were aptly in service of the theme, and the over-riding awareness was of Homer’s account of the Odyssey, and the many travails of those journeys. I was particularly impressed by the succinct nature of the poems in AMA BOLTON’s work Warp, and the way that she delivered them in a measured tone. The book she designed is a work of art. I feel immensely privileged to have a copy. The careful choreography of the entire afternoon demonstrated how exemplary the progression of readings and images were, and needed to be, for it to hold together. It’s another work of art.Verona Bass, Bath

Yesterday worked beautifully. The morning was as interesting as the others have been. I liked finding common ground with Linda and sitting opposite June who so bravely stood outside our positive response to‘ The Second Coming’. Also discovering new poems and poets is always a delight . The surprise of the morning for me was Robert Penn Warren’s ‘Evening Hawk’ found by Sue when surfing the net for poems about falcons: a poem that just opens out, and out taking the reader on its flight. I thought in some ways the afternoon was the best yet. I especially enjoyed Sue’s slides ( they introduce a whole new dimension) and the focus towards the end on the heart rending Greek experience. Here the surprise was ‘The Rescue’ by Edward Sackville-West coupled with its powerful illustrations by Henry Moore. Ama’s contributions were both moving: her vivid succinct poems from ‘ Warp’ and the gift of lines from ‘ The Odyssey’ read in Greek. I also enjoyed the two book launches from Verona and Ann: the titles of both books including ‘light’ and their poems shining ‘light on their subjects. In sum, I noticed that there is a lovely hum developing in those events among this group of people.Sarah Gregory, Bradford on Avon

It was a thoroughly enjoyable and stimulating day (it took a long time for my overactive brain to pipe down and let me sleep last night). although the morning session made demands on energy and thought, I was kept alert and interested enough not to ‘drift’ in the afternoon.The variety of poems and presentations was most helpful in this respect, but though these were indeed various and surprising, the recurring main sea and Odyssey theme running through it all gave a real narrative and sense of development to the journey/voyage. Although it made sense chronologically and in other ways to end with that harrowing period of Greek history in recent times, it was a dark place to find myself right at the end of the afternoon, in spite to the group recital at the finish. I’d liked perhaps to be taken out of it by, say a quiet sequence of Malolm’s wonderful paintings – just a thought, while appreciating the time issue. I was so please to see these images, and this marvellous reminder that Artists are of important significance in this group. More ‘presentations’ please of work by those of us who are making art as well as poems.Linda Saunders, Bath